The original Moto G from 2013 started out life at Verizon costing $100 sans contract, which is a very good amount for the specs. But that was then. Months have passed, it’s now 2015, so Best Buy decided it’s time for a discount.

Hence, the well known retailer will give you a Moto G for Verizon for just $19.99. Again, without a contract. This price drop now makes the original Moto G one of the cheapest prepaid phones for Big Red, and possibly the best of them all in terms of its price per features ratio. Read more »

LG G4 is the newest flagship on the market introduced just last week. It packs a 5.5″ improved IPS Quad HD display and is the first to run on the Snapdragon 808 chipset with a 6-core processor. The device is already on sale in South Korea and naturally is first teardown is now live.

Unlike many other top smartphones today, the LG G4 still offers removable rear cover and user-replaceable battery. This suggests a simpler assembly and construction of the inner parts and indeed this turned out to be true. In fact, LG G4 seems to be the easiest top-tier smartphone for repair this year. Read more »

Astroturfing is the practice of pretending to be a genuine person on internet forums, comments sections, and online reviews and posting positive or negative comments about a company while actually being on the payroll of a competitor. As unfortunate as it is, it’s also quite common, which makes it hard to take any comment or online review seriously.

Sooner or later though, somebody gets caught doing it, and this time it seems it’s Nubia. The sub-division of ZTE that recently made its way in India is already off to a not so great start. The email you see above is allegedly from a social media influencer apparently working for Nubia PR, requesting others to post negative comments about Meizu, who also recently opened shop in India, on Meizu’s Facebook profile, as well as post negative reviews on the their Amazon page. Read more »

The Oppo R7 is the latest member in the company’s series of thin smartphones. As you’re reading this, Oppo is holding the R7′s launch event in China, so specifications aren’t available in full just yet.

From the video, you can tell the R7 is meticulously crafted and Oppo is accenting on the phone’s thin profile made possible thanks to its metal frame. Read more »

Vanitas was a 16th and 17th century art style that served to remind people of the meaninglessness of earthly life and commonly depicted skulls. Art historians will be surprised to find the style reinterpreted as a luxury aftermarket customization of the iPhone 6, but here it is – the Mana Skull.

Only 50 will be made and use several thousand diamonds to depict a skull (with a police hat) and a yellow police line. Read more »

Samsung announced the launch of the Blue Topaz Galaxy S6 and the Emerald Green Galaxy S6 edge. Previously, the flagship smartphones were only available in white, black, and gold.

The two eye-grabbing color schemes were announced during the launch of the two devices. Read more »

We had been following closely the developments around the Oppo R1x, which was announced all the way back in January as R1C, bound for the Chinese market. The X replaced the C for the global version and the smartphone was on the roadmap for a release in April, though it still remains hard to find in online stores.

We managed to get our hands on a review unit only a couple of days ago and we’ll be doing our typical routine over the following weeks. However, a quick hands-on report was in order, which you can read here. Read more »

Microsoft Lumia 640 XL turned out quite capable device even though it is running on the modest Snapdragon 400 chipset. The XL flavor packs a big 5.7″ IPS display with ClearBlack technology, there is a snappy 13MP ZEISS camera, plus a beefy 3,000 mAh battery. We had high expectations for the battery life and the Lumia 640 XL lived up to them.

We had the 3G dual SIM version of the Lumia 640 XL, which supports dual-standby where one of the SIMs is hooked on a 3G network, while the other works on GSM mode. There is a LTE-capable dual SIM version, as well as 3G and LTE single-SIM editions. Read more »

We’ve had the Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet for review over the previous few weeks, and in case you missed that, you can find it here. Alongside the slate Sony announced the BKB50 snap-on keyboard dock which turns the the device into a compact Android ultrabook.

We received that one too, and got to spend a little quality time with it. You can read our impressions after the break. Read more »

In what could be a severe blow to companies like Google, mobile operators in Europe are planning to filter out advertisements on their networks, according to a Financial Times report.

As per the report, one unnamed carrier has already installed an ad blocking software, which is developed by Israeli startup Shine, and plans to activate it by the end of 2015. “Tens of millions of mobile subscribers around the world will be opting in to ad blocking by the end of the year,” said Roi Carthy, chief marketing officer of Shine. Read more »

Samsung released a series of Galaxy S6 edge promo videos dedicated for the Snapchat-loving crowd. The Korean giant’s marketing team teamed up with the social network’s celebrity Shonduras on a quartet of Edge-ucation videos (yes, the pun is intended).

As expected, the videos show viewers how to make catchy Snapchat content using the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge. Read more »

Seventy years of technological advancements have lead us to a point where pocket-sized devices now pack enough computing power to put to shame supercomputers of old. A recently published infographic by Experts Exchange shows some intriguing comparisons between supercomputers, consoles, smart watches and smartphones.

For example, the current top dog on the supercomputer front, the Chinese Tianhe-2 is capable of a staggering 33.86 PFLOPS (peta floating-point operations per second), which would take 18,400 Sony PlayStation 4s consoles to match. Read more »

Cortana, Microsoft’s personal assistant, is the star in the latest batch of Lumia 640 commercials published by Microsoft Lumia US. The four clips highlight Cortana’s ability to keep you up-to-date on your to-do list, by showing how a timely reminder can help you avoid awkward situations.

The videos are short and funny and come just in time to promote the handset’s launch in the US. Read more »

If you’re in the UK and have been interested in picking up a Moto X (2014), Nexus 6, or Moto 360 but haven’t yet done so, here’s something for you. Motorola has just announced a 48-hour sale for these three devices over there.

It will start at midnight on May 18. For two days from that point on, you’ll be able to purchase the second-generation Moto X (pictured above) for £299 (16GB) or £339 (32GB). Read more »

The oft-leaked and much-rumored Oppo R7 will finally go official on May 20, and as we get ever closer to that date the Chinese company keeps revealing new details about it. Today’s focus (excuse the pun) is on the cameras.

The R7′s rear camera will be a 13 MP unit with an ISOCELL sensor and a lens made by Schneider-Kreuznach. The ISOCELL tech, which we’ve so far seen in some of Samsung’s recent flagships, is said to reduce inter-pixel crosstalk, capture more light, and improve dynamic range. Read more »